


Victory Enough

by PunishedPyotr



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Consent Play, Crying, D/s, Flashbacks, Light Bondage, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex as Therapy, reupload, who needs safewords when you're psychic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 02:42:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunishedPyotr/pseuds/PunishedPyotr
Summary: Sequel toBroken.





	Victory Enough

**Author's Note:**

> (ok i've decided. i'll update twice on saturdays and sundays, once in the morning(ish) and once at night sometime!)  
> (btw, i didn't manage to snag this fic before it went down. aireyv sent me the original file, and remembered what the summary was, but neither of us know what the original author/s notes were and i'm just kind of guessing about the formatting. sorry!!!)

The second-to-last time Liquid had cried was right after he’d killed a person for the first time.

He’d been seven years old and had just escaped his handlers while in Africa, and had wound up in Mauritania where he was picked up by a human trafficker. She was kind to him at first but he couldn’t bring himself to trust her - even at seven years old he knew better than to _trust_ \- and then she’d tried to sell him to some Middle Eastern slaver. Liquid wouldn’t find out what a “bacchá” was for another couple years, but even back then he knew that whatever it was, he didn’t want to be one.

A few short hours before he was supposed to be spirited away to Afghanistan, little Eli stole a machete about as long as he was tall and nearly cut the trafficker’s head off.

Even as an adult he still remembered how much blood there had been everywhere - all over the room, all over the machete, and all over him. And how dead the woman was, he remembered that even more vividly. But within weeks after it had happened he no longer felt horror at what he’d done and in fact he no longer felt _anything_ , and later still he’d come to be proud of the fact that he had killed an adult, all by himself, with no training or direction or _order_ from anyone but himself, before he’d even turned eight.

He’d fallen asleep after he was done crying and he woke up to an associate of the trafficker telling him that he was made for _war_ , made for killing, and a bacha Baz would only waste his talents. So he’d sent him to Angola to fight in their civil war, and there on the battlefield young Eli found his place.

* * *

The last time Liquid had cried was right after he’d been raped for the first time.

He’d been eighteen years old and, following a botched SAS mission, trapped in a prison camp run by Iraqi extremists who were losing the Gulf War, not that he’d known when the war was lost until after he’d been rescued three, almost four years later. He’d find out then that Kuwait had been liberated and the war had ended only weeks after he’d been taken prisoner. He and a few other soldiers who didn’t last nearly as long as he did were only being held hostage as human shields against anyone trying to smoke out remaining insurgents. Can’t bomb their suspected base if it’s filled with POWs, after all. That could get messy.

They tortured him, at first for information, then later because Liquid made himself as much of a nuisance as possible because of how much he _hated_ his captors and they just wanted to break his will, but Liquid honestly didn’t have any fucks to give about that. Pain didn’t matter to him at all. He could handle it. He could _more_ than handle it.

He tried to escape more times than he could count but he’d been badly wounded when they captured him, and further wounded as they tortured him, and naturally they didn’t give the prisoners enough to eat so on top of being injured, he was half-starved and his wounds couldn’t heal as quickly as they normally would. Whatever. He could worry about the pitiful state of his body when he was a hundred thousand miles away from Iraq, or Kuwait, or wherever the hell they were.

They kept catching him, though, and quickly got fed up and they broke his legs.

It… hurt.

But it didn’t matter.

He’d been dragged out of his cell, arms tied, and it was obvious they were going to torture him again. He overheard them talking about humiliation, but was unimpressed. He didn’t care about that any more than he cared about the pain — just another part of torture, something that Liquid was so determined not to submit to that the Iraqis didn’t even know his _name_ until one of them read his dogtags.

His face was forced against the ground and he tasted dirt, and this was pretty run-of-the-mill, and someone yanked him up by the back of his pants, and Liquid didn’t notice for a second that he was face-down-ass-up because he was too busy blinking bright spots out of his eyes at the pain of having weight forced onto his broken thighs. Then he realized what position he was in and was really just confused. Perhaps they were going to whip him again?

There was the sound of pants being unzipped around him, and he thought, _Oh, they’re going to urinate on me. How disgusting_. But as gross as that was, it was almost laughable to think that they thought that would humiliate him enough to break him.

Then one of them grabbed his pants and yanked them down and Liquid put two and two together and understood with a sinking feeling that he was about to be on the receiving end of a _different_  war crime.

It hurt. It _hurt_ , badly.

Probably he could have just brushed it off like he did any of the _other_ torture if they hadn’t stripped his control of _himself_ , of his _own body_ away from him by forcing him to some horrible orgasm. Afterwards one of them had grabbed him by the ear and shoved his nose against the ground, rubbing Liquid’s face in his own semen and laughing at him for cumming from being fucked by a bunch of men, crowing slurs at him - khaneeth, balla’a el air, gahhba, qyba, mukhannath - and promising that this would happen again, that he was the whole camp’s fucktoy now.

Then they’d thrown him back in the cell and Liquid had huddled in his corner and eventually gave up on suppressing his sobs. And despite the blood and vomit and semen on his face, it was the _tears_ that hurt the worst.

* * *

_It’s fine as long as no one can tell_ , he thought. _As long as no one knows._

* * *

He was just trying to have a conversation with Wolf. That was all he was doing, just talking to her, not even about anything important, just a casual conversation with someone he considered a friend. And at some point she’d said some quip in Arabic, because there wasn’t an English equivalent to what she was trying to say, and the conversation had shifted languages with either of them hardly noticing.

And then she’d said _something_ \- Liquid didn’t even remember _what_ — some joke, some trifle, something completely inane but there was just something about a random word she used or the inflection of her voice or _something_ and suddenly Liquid felt rather sick and he had to excuse himself and Mantis found him about ten minutes later hiding under a cardboard box in a dark corner of the building with his face pressed against his knees and his hands in his hair.

“I knew you were on edge today,” Mantis sighed, crouching in front of Liquid and lifting the box off of him, then - as nonthreateningly as he could, and drawing back slightly when Liquid flinched before advancing again - running one hand across Liquid’s hair, then slipping his fingers down his jaw and under his chin, gently coaxing him to look up at him.

“Dreams again last night?” he said softly.

Liquid was unwilling to answer for a moment, then finally said, “I thought I was done with it.”

“Engaging in a coping mechanism once, even if it is a rather extreme one, is not the same thing as a cure,” Mantis said. “There _is_ no cure. You cannot erase what happened to you.”

“I… I know.”

There was a brief pause, and Mantis waited as Liquid wrestled with his own mind, trying to get it to stop spinning and twisting in on itself, pushing aside unwanted memories. “Liquid, if we did _that_ again - would you feel any better?”

Once Mantis had put the question in his mind it took Liquid a few seconds to come up with an answer. Mantis nodded slightly when he did, without Liquid needing to speak out loud, then stood. “That’s enough, then, boss. Stand up, go make your excuses to Wolf, go about your day. You are fine.”

Liquid stood as well, his movements somewhat stiff, and smoothed his pants in a purely frenetic gesture. “Right,” he said, and at least his voice was perfectly steady again. “Enough of that. I’m fine.”

“I will meet you in your quarters tonight. Shower beforehand.”

“…right.”

* * *

“I killed them all in the end,” Liquid said, mostly to himself, sitting on his bed with his legs drawn up underneath him and Mantis standing nearby, “just before the Americans showed up and got me out of there. And - and I’d memorized the faces of the ones who did this to me and I made sure they _suffered_ before they died. I _won_.”

Mantis patiently watched him.

“This… this doesn’t feel like victory,” Liquid said at length.

“It was victory enough that you came back alive, Eli,” Mantis said.

The corner of Liquid’s mouth twitched at Mantis calling him that name, but he knew better than to argue. Not right now. Right now, Mantis was in charge and Liquid had to do whatever he said, and that included not arguing with him.

It was simple, really. Even with as many years had passed, Liquid couldn’t just _get over_ having his control over his own self ripped violently away from him, because quite frankly that wasn’t the sort of thing one _could_ just _get over_. And when Mantis had finally confronted him about it, about how he needed to accept Mantis’ offer of help before he tore himself apart over this, this was what he had come up with: that same control that he’d lost back then, he’d turn over to Mantis, wholly and completely, blindly even, because he trusted Mantis so much that he still felt safe _choosing_ for Mantis to have control over him.

“Strip,” Mantis said.

Still, though, there was a bit of trepidation as he carried out Mantis’ order. Some hesitation as he took off his clothes, and enough of a desire to just kind of put this off a little bit that he actually folded his clothing before placing it on the floor, a completely unnecessary move.

Mantis didn’t stare this time. “Lie down,” he said, “on your back.”

Liquid obeyed, staring fixedly up at the ceiling and swallowing uncomfortably. Mantis climbed onto the bed as well, standing on his knees over Liquid’s stomach and looking down at him. Liquid avoided eye contact; Mantis took his hands in his own.

“Things will be a little more intense this time, Eli.”

“Oh?”

“I will stop if you reach your limit. But only _I_ will decide if it’s gotten to be too much for you. Do you understand that? Even if you beg me to stop, I will not if I feel you are capable of continuing.”

Liquid nodded jerkily. “I understand.”

“Good,” Mantis said, his voice soft again. He lifted Liquid’s hands up to the bar of the headboard, and psychically retrieved two lengths of nylon rope from his ominous cloth bag and tied Liquid’s wrists against the cool metal, keeping an eye on his mind to make sure Liquid wasn’t thinking he’d tied it _too_ tight.

Mantis moved away, and Liquid watched him closely, not saying anything. He grimaced as Mantis spread his legs. _Can we not do the spreader bar tonight…_ , he thought.

Mantis looked up at him. “What, you don’t like it?” he said with a trace of sarcasm.

“Quite frankly,” Liquid said, looking off to the side and tugging at the rope at his wrists slightly, “I don’t _like_ any of this.”

“Mm.” Mantis cuffed the spreader bar to his knees without any room for argument or negotiation.

Liquid took a deep, uneasy breath as Mantis slipped the blindfold over his eyes, but relaxed a little when Mantis gently brushed a few strands of hair away from his temples.

“There,” Mantis said, “no need to be nervous.”

“Nn…”

He sat back, and ghosted his fingers up over the scars on Liquid’s thighs — Liquid drew them up a little, shying away from Mantis’ touch, but leaving himself more exposed — then started stroking his dick. Liquid bit his lip, making a small whining sound in his throat, and as Mantis continued his hips twitched upwards, largely unintentionally.

“Oh… god…”

“Shh.”

It took a minute or two for Liquid to get hard enough for Mantis to deem him ready and put the cockring on him, and by that time Liquid’s heart was beating just a little too fast, and his breathing was just a little too shaky. His mind was in turmoil, but when he felt Mantis’ hands on him he was able to focus on the feeling of the leather of Mantis’ gloves, and that helped to ground him a bit.

“Good,” Mantis said, leaning forward and rubbing a thumb over Liquid’s cheek, “very good. Focus on me, Eli.”

Liquid nodded, then drew a breath in through his teeth as he felt the lube at his ass. He’d been expecting it, of course, he remembered how it went last time, but still…

“I-It’s cold,” he complained.

“Oh, hush.”

He let out another whine as the tip of the vibrator pressed against him and started pulling against the rope again, without thinking.

Mantis gripped Liquid’s wrists, and he stilled, trying to get his breathing back under control. “Just relax,” Mantis whispered, and the vibrator pushed in and turned on.

Liquid’s whole body tensed and he made a whimper that turned into a low groan — Mantis squeezed his wrists, reminding him of his presence again, and Liquid hesitantly relaxed, just a bit, hiding his face against his shoulder and shifting his hips uncomfortably. Mantis stood on his knees again, over Liquid’s chest, and took Liquid’s head in his hands, tilting it up to look at him even though he couldn’t see.

“Does that feel good, Eli?” he said.

Liquid couldn’t decide.

“Answer me, Eli.”

“M-Mantis… please…”

The vibrator eased forward, nudging against Liquid’s prostate. His hips jerked up. “How does that feel?” Mantis asked.

“G-Good,” Liquid stammered, “good. It f-feels good, Mantis. I-I don’t like it but it f-feels good.”

Mantis brushed his hair back with his fingers. “Why do you not like it, Eli?”

Liquid moaned. “I-I don’t- I can’t— oh god, Mantis, o-oh god… n-no… M-Mantis?”

Mantis shushed him, still stroking his hair. “You are fine.”

“…r-right, right, yes, I… I’m fine… th-this is fine…”

“It’s only me.”

“Y-Yes, it’s fine if it’s w-with you, Mantis…” (He was really just trying to convince himself.)

Without moving his hands from Liquid’s hair, Mantis undid the hidden zipper in the crotch of his outfit. Liquid froze at the sound, his anxiety spiking as far, far too detailed memories flashed into his mind.

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” he snarled reflexively, yanking at his ties so hard that for a split second Mantis thought he was going to break them - or break his skin.

“Eli,” Mantis said in a very gentle voice, “calm down. It is still only me.”

Liquid was still for a second, his thoughts sort of blanking out at Mantis’ voice, then moved his head from side to side, on some illogical level thinking he could see Mantis through the blindfold if only he looked from the right angle. “M… Mantis? Oh…” He was really mostly just confused now. “I-I thought…” He was distracted by the vibrator buzzing against his prostate again, and he let out a dazed moan.

Mantis patted his cheek. “It’s alright, Eli. Now…” Setting aside the fact that honestly he didn’t want to do this, he guided his limp cock to rest against Liquid’s lower lip. It took Liquid a second to realize what that warm weight was, then he briefly panicked, drawing his head back in revulsion — Mantis grabbed his hair, keeping his head close to his groin, not forcefully (he didn’t have the physical strength to do it forcefully anyway) but firmly.

“Cooperate with me, Eli,” Mantis said, “we’ll never get anything done if you do not.”

Liquid shook his head, pressing his lips together tightly. His thoughts weren’t very articulate right now, but could mostly be summed up with _No No No No No No No No Get that away from me_

Mantis ignored him, and Liquid didn’t quite resist him pulling his face closer to his dick.

 _Please, Mantis_ , Liquid thought, getting enough of a grip to think coherently, _don’t make me do this. It’s degrading, it hurts my throat, I can’t breathe, I feel sick — oh god I feel sick, Mantis,_ and he did, Mantis could sense the nausea rising in him. _Please don’t make me do this, I can suck your fingers again, would that work? Please, Mantis, this is disgusting…_

 _Well_ , Mantis thought, careful not to broadcast it to Liquid, _he’s not wrong_. “Fingers aren’t enough,” he said.

Liquid shook his head again, his whole body trembling and not entirely because of the vibrator in his ass. _I can taste it already, Mantis… it’s foul… please, I can’t do this._

“Do not worry about that,” Mantis said, “I cleaned myself very thoroughly. And I will not choke you, I’ll be gentle…”

Liquid swallowed hard, convincing himself to just calm down and trust Mantis, and - slowly - pressed his lips against Mantis’ cock, then his tongue. He was nervously anticipating Mantis demanding he put his mouth around him — after a few moments he realized Mantis was allowing him to do this at his own pace, and he finally relaxed, licking his dick more steadily, feeling it grow stiff under his efforts and internally squirming at that but knowing that the hands tangled in his hair were Mantis’…

“It’s salty,” Liquid mumbled against Mantis’ skin.

Mantis couldn’t keep his breath from hitching. “This isn’t so bad, Eli, is it?” he said, and watched him suck the side of his dick in lieu of a response, craning his neck forward to get his lips near the base — _God_ , this was lewd. Mantis looked away for a few moments, trying not to think about the _mindlessness_ with which Liquid was kissing Mantis’ cock.

He slid one hand down the side of Liquid’s face, slipping his thumb between his lips and pulling his jaw down, snapping Liquid back to his senses. He made a rather upset pleading noise in his throat as Mantis pushed his erection into Liquid’s now-open mouth.

“Don’t tense up,” Mantis told him, “and breathe through your nose.”

Liquid whined, and again Mantis held his hand firmly in his hair, reminding him to stay put.

“Suck.”

It really made Mantis sick to feel how _practiced_ Liquid was at sucking dick, and to see in his mind how little he was thinking about it, just- acting on reflexes beaten into him in Iraq. Mantis pushed forward, and Liquid gagged, the turmoil in his mind returning: _Stop it Stop it Stop it Stop it Stop it Don’t Don’t Don’t_

“Just breathe, Eli,” Mantis said, petting his hair.

_I can’t!_

“You can,” Mantis said, easing his hips forward until Liquid’s nose was pressed up against the leather covering his stomach. Liquid made a couple pained choking sounds, but didn’t try very hard to pull back, letting Mantis’ hands on the back of his head and neck keep him there, comforted by the smell of leather. He swallowed awkwardly around him, and Mantis looked up at the ceiling, his breath catching again.

God. What a situation he’d gotten himself into.

“Do not bite me,” Mantis said, somewhat unnecessarily, as he started to lazily throatfuck Liquid.

He only did it for a few minutes, and Liquid didn’t object to his mouth being used like this really at all anymore; mostly his thoughts were just reminding himself that it was _Mantis_ who was doing this, Mantis, whom he trusted… Nonetheless by the time Mantis pulled back out Liquid was shaking badly and once his mouth was free he gulped down air so fast it bordered on hyperventilation.

“You did well, Eli,” Mantis said (his voice was a little uneven but Liquid was too far gone to notice), gently wiping saliva off Liquid’s chin. “Good boy.”

Liquid coughed, the cuffs of the spreader bar clinking as his legs twitched together. “M-Mantis…”

“Shh, Eli. Don’t talk.”

He moaned instead, lifting his hips up, trying to draw Mantis’ attention to his aching erection and the intolerable buzz of the vibrator. Mantis sighed. He switched off the toy and withdrew it, and waited a few moments for Liquid to stop shivering, or at least shiver less.

Liquid leaned his head against his arm, swallowing awkwardly. He was expecting another, larger vibrator now.

“No,” Mantis said, “we’re not doing more of that.”

He turned his head in the direction of Mantis’ voice, the confusion evident even on his face (despite the blindfold). “No…? W-We’re done, then, a-are we?” He was mostly hopeful… part of him was even excited at the prospect of Mantis jerking him off and relieving the throbbing pressure in his groin.

“No, we are not done.”

“O-Oh.” He squirmed uncomfortably under Mantis. “Then- then what—?” He suddenly thought, _Oh my god, he’s going to fuck me_ , and did his best to draw away from Mantis. “Oh no, no, Mantis, don’t, _please_ -“

“Eli, I-“

“Please tell me you won’t, t-tell me, please, you won’t, you _can’t_ —“

“—don’t like to hear you beg.”

He placed himself between Liquid’s thighs, pressing his hands flat against his ribs as a silent order to keep still and behave himself. Liquid did, or did his best, anyway, suppressing his shudders and tilting his head back, his hands clenching and unclenching frenetically and his legs as close together as the spreader bar would allow, and his breaths coming too quick and too shallow.

“Eli, calm down,” Mantis said, pressing the head of his cock up against Liquid’s already slicked, already prepared asshole. “Relax.”

“N-No, stop,” Liquid moaned, then repeated himself in Arabic and added something about how he’d flay you all alive for this, peel the skin off of all your bodies piece by bloody, ragged piece—

“It’s only me, Eli,” Mantis said, brushing hair out of his face. “No one else.”

“Th-this is too m-much, Mantis,” he choked out, shaking his head. “S-Stop it. Stop this.”

“You are handling this very well so far.”

“I w-want to stop, Mantis. Please, I-I, I’m—“

— _scared_. Mantis winced behind his mask. He could probably count on one hand the number of times Liquid had admitted his fear to himself for as long as Mantis had known him.

He stroked his hair, tenderly. “What is there to be afraid of?” he asked softly.

Liquid just shook his head. He couldn’t articulate an answer to that.

“Do you think I will hurt you?”

“Nn… no, n-never…”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“N-No.”

“Are you afraid of the control I have over you?”

He hesitated before nodding jerkily.

Mantis kept petting his hair, and pressed himself a little closer, pushing just the tip in. Liquid whimpered, his back arching. “You surrendered control to me, Eli. Did you forget?”

“No, I- I d-did, but— b-but—“

“No ‘but’s, Eli. Now calm down and breathe. You can handle this.”

Liquid nodded again, uncertainly, and tried to focus on matching his breathing against Mantis - who was breathing a little hard himself, but nothing like Liquid, whose body was apparently convinced it was suffocating. Mantis nodded to himself, and slid his dick the rest of the way into Liquid’s ass.

 _God_.

It was as hot as his mouth but _tighter_ and it almost broke his concentration. His grip in Liquid’s hair tightened without him realizing it until Liquid whined at the pulling at his scalp. He quickly loosened his fingers.

“How…” Mantis started, then swallowed hard, “how does that feel, Eli?”

A couple words came to Liquid’s mind, _thick hot hard throbbing uncomfortable intrusive_ , and he settled on a breathless “G-Good.”

“Good.”

He started moving his hips, slowly, as steady and smooth as he could (which at times wasn’t saying much), and when Liquid tried to shy away from his thrusts he moved one hand down to his hip and held him in place. Liquid whimpered, tugging at the rope again, although it was more a nervous gesture than a genuine attempt to free himself.

“It is only me, Eli,” Mantis whispered, leaning close, “only me and no one else. You’re fine.”

“O-Oh, no, please… Mantis…”

“Hush.”

“N-No… stop…”

“Eli, shh.”

Liquid muttered something plaintive in Arabic.

“Eli, it’s alright.”

“M-Mantis,” he gasped, “help m-me. Please, help me…”

“It’s me who is doing this to you,” Mantis said, “and I am not hurting you.”

Liquid shook his head. He was lost in memories right now, and Mantis kept playing with his hair, trying to draw him back out.

“Eli, listen to me.”

“S-Stop it…”

“Hush. Listen to me. That is me that you feel.”

“Stop it—“

“Are you in pain? Do you feel pain right now, Eli?”

“N-No, stop asking questions, I-I won’t answer any of your-“

His back arched violently as Mantis hit his prostate with a touch more force than he’d intended to, and he moaned loudly enough that Mantis glanced over his shoulder, hoping no one heard.

“S-Stop this, stop it, god damn it,” Liquid panted, straining against the spreader bar, and Mantis had to use his psychic powers to keep it from bending or breaking.

“Eli, calm down, and hold still.”

“I don’t w-want this! Stop t-touching me!! G-Get off of me!!”

“Eli, shut up.”

“D-Don’t, don’t, _don’t_ —!”

Mantis put his hand over Liquid’s mouth, and Liquid made some kind of strange, pathetic, panicked growl. “Calm down, Eli,” Mantis said, “it’s me. Only me. Do you recognize my voice?”

Nothing but chaos in his mind, chaos and anger and confusion and _fear_.

Liquid whimpered as Mantis’ cock hit his prostate again. Every thrust, every throb drew Liquid’s attention to his own achingly swollen dick and how the cockring prevented orgasm, leaving him sore and frustrated and humiliatingly desperate.

“Eli,” Mantis whispered, pressing the filter of his gas mask up against Liquid’s ear, “come back to me, Eli. _That_ is long over. _This_ is now.”

Liquid just whimpered again, trying to twist his body away from Mantis. His breath was very heavy against Mantis’ palm.

“Do you recognize my voice, Eli? My touch?” He reaffirmed his grip on Liquid’s hip. “Is it me you feel inside you, or the memory of men you killed?”

Liquid groaned. _Mercy_ , he thought, _have mercy_.

Mantis took his hand off his mouth. “Say my name, Eli.”

“Get o-off of me,” Liquid said deliriously in a harsh whisper, even as his voice shook.

Mantis brushed hair away from his temples again. “Say it.”

There was a long pause as Liquid panted and tried to work out Mantis’ request in his mind. “M… M-Mantis…?”

“Good boy.”

Liquid tilted his head back, shifting his hips to meet Mantis’ thrusts. “Mantis…” he whispered again, his voice tight, “M-Mantis, oh god, Mantis… _Mantis_ …”

“I’m here.”

“M-Ma— fuck— Mantis…”

And some invisible tipping point was reached, and something snapped in Liquid’s mind. He drew in a choked breath, biting his lip, and Mantis hurriedly pulled out (Liquid cried out in what might have been pain), undoing Liquid’s bondage - untying his hands, uncuffing him from the spreader bar, pulling off the cockring (Liquid started violently at that), leaving the blindfold for last. He took that off with his hands.

Liquid’s eyes were swimming with tears when Mantis undid the blindfold, tears that spilled over as he blinked in the dim light. He sniffed loudly, rubbing his wrists, which he’d scraped raw against the nylon rope.

“It’s over,” Mantis said, wiping his tears away. “We are done. Hush now, Eli. No crying.”

Liquid nodded, but at the same time a sob broke free. Mantis kept wiping at his eyes, his touch as soft as he was capable, and Liquid kept crying, overwhelmed and inconsolable.

“Shh, shh. Eli, sit up. Come here.”

He sat up, wincing at his erection, and Mantis pulled him close, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and letting him sob into his chest, getting tears and snot all over the leather. No matter. He’d needed to clean it later anyway. He ran his fingers through Liquid’s hair, gently shushing him.

“It’s alright, Eli. No more. You have had enough.”

“M-Mantis…”

“Shh.”

Gradually Liquid calmed down, and the tears stopped, and he got embarrassed at having broke down like that and tried to pull away - but Mantis didn’t let him go and he gave up quickly, burying his face in Mantis’ shoulder, his chest tight and his head spinning.

“You did very well, Eli,” Mantis murmured. And in all honesty, he was very impressed at the fact that Liquid hadn’t completely shut down by now like he did last time…

He felt Liquid nod against his shoulder, then pull himself closer against him — and with a soft moan from Liquid they both remembered that they were both still hard.

Mantis sighed as Liquid started rocking back and forth in his lap, rubbing himself against him. “Eli, sit back,” he said, “I’ll take care of that for you.”

“What about y-you?” Liquid mumbled, still slowly grinding against Mantis’ stomach.

“You are exhausted and you’ll fall asleep within a few minutes after you get off… I will just go take a cold shower once you have,” he said, then added, “I will not take long, and I will return after—“

“Take me.”

Mantis blinked.

“…what?” he said, although he knew exactly what Liquid meant already.

“Take me,” Liquid said again, face still pressed against Mantis’ shoulder, “claim me. Fuck me, leave your seed inside me, and mark me as your territory.” He sniffed again. “M-Make me yours, Mantis.”

Mantis took a deep breath. This man, sometimes… “Eli, we were just doing that,” he said, “and it was too much for you. I don’t want to trigger another flashback.”

“I’m not bound anymore.”

He probably had a point. And he was definitely sure about what he wanted now… “I do not think this is a good idea.”

Liquid’s arms around him tightened. “I can still feel their hands on me,” he whispered, “I don’t want this. I never wanted this.”

“I know, Eli.”

“I was- I was their slave, their toy. It’s like I still belong to them, Mantis. I-I can’t keep living like this.”

“So you want to belong to me instead?” Mantis said.

“Yes,” Liquid said, then drew back and searched Mantis’ eyes. “Take me, Mantis. Please…”

Mantis tilted his head, trying to gauge from Liquid’s mind how well he could _really_ handle that, not just how well he _thought_ he could handle it, then huffed and pushed him back onto his back. Liquid spread his legs for him - almost shyly - and wrapped them around his waist, holding onto his shoulders, watching what little he could see of his face through the lens of his mask carefully.

“Alright,” Mantis said quietly, carefully easing his way back into Liquid’s heat, “ _mine_.”

* * *

        “ _There was a time when you let me know-_

        “ _What’s really going on below—_

        “ _But now you never show that to me, do you?_ ”

Mantis switched off the radio and sat down in the chair next to Liquid’s hospital bed.

“You’re grim today,” Liquid said, looking pointedly out the window on opposite wall, through which the gray sky could be seen.

“E-… Liquid…” Mantis said, “we need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About what happened while you were being held prisoner.”

Liquid was silent. If his legs hadn’t been still healing right now, he would have gotten up and started pacing restlessly, like a wild animal in a cage.

“Nothing happened while I was being held prisoner,” he said eventually.

“Liquid, please do not lie to me. I already saw everything in your memories.”

There was another long pause, and then Liquid said, in a small voice, “I thought you didn’t look.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“I was unsure how to.”

Liquid kept staring out the window. It was much rainier in England than it was in Iraq.

“I didn’t want you to know,” he said after a very long time.

* * *

Liquid was still shaking as he came down off his climax, still pumping his hips rather uselessly against Mantis, still gasping for breath. Mantis was panting, too, his breath rasping loudly through his gas mask, staring down at Liquid, who was gazing up at him with an almost confused, possibly misplaced, devotion. He grabbed Mantis’ head, dragging him down to kiss his ear.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Do you feel properly claimed now?” Mantis said tiredly.

Liquid shifted his weight, feeling the sticky slickness of Mantis’ semen in his ass, and nodded.

 _Sometimes I wonder if I do not put up with far too much from you_ , Mantis thought, not caring if Liquid overheard or not.

As Mantis had observed earlier, within minutes after Liquid orgasmed his exhaustion took its toll and he really just wanted to sleep. He curled up close to Mantis, closing his eyes, and Mantis pulled a blanket over him then took to playing idly with his hair. Although, he was now rather tired himself…

“I thought about you a lot, while I was imprisoned,” Liquid mumbled.

Mantis knew that already - knew everything already - but stayed silent, figuring it was best to just let Liquid talk. He indicated he was listening by continuing to stroke his hair.

“I thought about a lot of things, and a lot of people… but you, you were the only one I thought about because I- needed comfort. Every time I tried to escape and got caught, every time they beat me, or tortured me, or…” he trailed off. “I thought about you afterwards…”

If Mantis had been there back then then none of this would have happened. He never would have _allowed_ any of this to happen.

“I couldn’t escape by myself, I figured that out quickly. And — I wanted to die. I knew I wouldn’t, though. I couldn’t. So I told myself, every time, ‘You have to stay alive, just for one more day. Tomorrow, Mantis will find out where you are, and he’ll come for you.’”

He’d searched for Liquid, of course, or rather he’d searched for anyone who might have even the faintest inkling of where Liquid might be. If he could have gotten better results from combing the desert mile by mile until he walked into that POW camp, he would have. Maybe he should have anyway - he never found out where Liquid was being held, not until he’d been notified that he had just arrived at a veterans’ hospital in London and had come and seen it in the man himself’s mind.

Mantis was pretty sure he hadn’t even been there when Liquid had woken up for the first time. But his first fuzzy memories of the hospital involved Mantis holding his hand after an operation, so maybe that was—

No, it wasn’t good enough. It could never _be_ good enough. Mantis had let him down in so many ways, the day he’d decided that he didn’t need Eli any more and they had parted. And now here he was, in Liquid’s bed, still trying to pick up the pieces.

“And then you did,” Liquid murmured, “you came for me. In the hospital, I remember…”

“Eli, hush,” Mantis said. “You’ve been through a lot tonight. Go to sleep.”

Liquid shifted slightly, resettling against Mantis’ chest. He was half-asleep already. “Say I’m yours?”

“You are mine. Rest now, Eli.”

“I love you, Mantis…”

“I know. Sleep. You won.”


End file.
